Back in the day, we used to have a fiscally conservative party, that was a bit more socially conservative than the Liberal Party of Canada, or the New Democratic Party. The Progressive Conservatives. Now we have the Conservative Party of Canada, with origins in populist, socially conservative splinter parties, that ate the PCs. It leaves people like my parents with no one to vote for, because they can’t stand Harper but are fiscally more conservative. Well, my dad is creeped out by gays, so he votes Conservative, my mother doesn’t think someone’s sexuality is anyones business, so she votes Liberal.
India also has socialist healthcare and terrible quality of life outcomes. It just goes to show that it’s impossible to implement collectivist government programs in countries with over one hundred million people.
This is really getting tiresome.
What the hell is he on?
To be fair, in Canada since about 1990 both the Liberals and Conservatives have been more fiscally conservative than either the Democrats or Republicans. First Mulroney’s PC’s actually lowered a tax rate and broadened its base (replacing the MST with the GST), then Chretien’s Liberals actually froze spending for 4 years while inflation and the dotcom boom grew revenues to the point where the deficit was wiped out, and then Harper’s Conservatives actually slowly lowered tax rates by small amounts and kept spending in check so that the budget remained balanced till the global economic crisis.
But that’s not really so much right wing as just being responsible adults. That pinko commie Tommy Douglas paid down Saskatchewan’s debt while he was in office, and no one will ever call him right wing.
Take a look at his profile. It explains a lot.
I’m just glad the bloody thing’s over.
Oh. Richard Parker, you’re in trouble!
It’s only failing half of us. And the other half doesn’t like social engineering. No, I don’t know what the hell they mean by that either. At any rate, Elizabeth Drew discusses those long lines: The long lines were a testament to the significance the right to vote holds in the minds of American citizens. But they were also deliberately caused by limits imposed by Republican officials on the amount of time allowed for early voting. In both Ohio and Florida, the number of days allotted for early voting was sharply reduced from 2008. In theory, early voting is supposed to provide voters opportunities to avoid long lines and cast their votes before election day, but the limits on the number of early voting days assured that early voters ended up in long lines on early voting days as well as on election day.
My own selection for pin-up boy of the vote-suppressing camp of 2012 is Ohio Attorney General Jon Husted, a baby-faced forty-five-year-old who has ambitions to run for governor in 2014. Husted’s wholesome innocent demeanor makes him all the more menacing.He twisted and turned and came up with all manner of schemes to keep Democratic supporters, mainly blacks and other minorities, from voting. He tried to prevent early voting in urban (for which read black) areas but the idea was hooted down by the citizens of Ohio, hardly a radical state. He eliminated all early voting on weekends but a federal district court forced him to reinstate a final weekend. And then, in a last-gasp attempt to to prevent people from voting, at 7:00 PM on the Friday of the weekend before the election, Husted suddenly issued an order demanding that voters, rather than polling officials, to fill out the forms requesting a provisional ballot—his new form of literacy test. This was immediately seen as yet another attempt at disenfranchisement. As it happened Obama carried Ohio by a large enough margin that Husted’s final trick didn’t come into play.